Mangia!

Okay, I wanted to shout something Italian, and the first thing that came to mind was, “MANGIA!” which roughly translates to the English word EATS! It seemed appropriate enough. Eats, eats! To eat is what we wanted on Friday evening, as two skinny creatures who emerged from an Italian hibernation only to shout, “We wants to MANGIA!” And we wanted to "MANGIA" fast. Using lavish from our favorite Lebanese bakery and a few provisions I had in the fridge, I quickly assembled Friday night's fare. There was even enough time after supper for Shane and I to play Rummy, every game of which I graciously lost.

This time I did time how long it took me to prepare and serve our vittles :

5:45 p.m.: walk in door; greet Shane; change from work clothes into jeans and a sweater; take care of necessary “functions”; wash hands; preheat oven to 450-475 degrees.

6:00 p.m.: thaw lavish in microwave; wash, peel off skin, and thinly slice red onions; chop green olives; crumble feta cheese; wash and chop fresh thyme.

6:15: spread lavish onto cookie sheet; brush with olive oil; scatter feta cheese; scatter onions and olives; pop cookie sheet into oven.

6:16: sip some merlot.

6:20: chop pre-washed romaine lettuce and toss into bowl; throw in extra sliced onions; shred some Parmigianino over lettuce; slice one lemon in half; set lemon aside.

6:21: sip some merlot

6:25: check pizzas and notice they are browning along the edges and cheese is starting to brown and melt; turn off oven but keep pizzas in oven.

6:26: dress salad with juice from half the lemon, tablespoon olive oil, salt, and freshly ground pepper; toss salad.

6:30: remove pizza from oven and cut each piece in half.

6:32: toast dinner with Shane and tuck in.

Including preheating the oven, I had supper on the table in approximately 47 minutes. You too can enjoy a fast and tasty flat bread pizza! Additions such as roasted red peppers (patted dry if juicy), slices of cured beef or Prosciutto, and fresh basil (wait until the pizza comes from the oven to add fresh basil) would be wonderful variations.

Oh, oh, oh, I also think goat brie, sliced figs, and Serrano ham with fresh thyme would oh so divine…

Flat Bread Pizzas (serves 2 for a full meal, 4 to 6 for appetizers):

2 large pieces lavish bread (each almost 12 inches in length)
Olive oil
4 oz feta cheese, crumbled
¼ red onion, thinly sliced
5 or 6 Spanish or Greek green olives, chopped
Handful chopped fresh thyme

Preheat oven to 450-475 degrees (I hit my dial somewhere in the middle).

Arrange lavish breads on cookie sheet and fold each in half lengthwise and crosswise. Brush with olive oil. Scatter over top feta cheese, onions, and green olives. Pop cookie sheet in oven, and bake pizzas for 10-15 minutes, or until brown on the edges and cheese begins to melt. Watch closely and check after 10 minutes so flat bread doesn’t burn. Remove pizzas from the oven and scatter thyme over the top. Cut in piece in 2-4 pieces. Serve with a crisp romaine salad. Shane and I even took some of our crispy edges from the pizza and threw them into the salad. What convenience – pizzas with built in croutons. After a few sips of merlot, I feel like a genius!

Happy Easter!

Please do not think the only thing I did this Easter weekend was construct a bunny from 2 baguettes, a boule, and a couple of raisins. I also napped, watched several movies, and shared an entire bottle of champagne with Shane (over the course of a day, not in one sitting). It was a very productive, albeit cold weekend. In the course of my weekend, I saw more snowmen than bunnies.

Even as we wolfed our Easter evening quiche, I gazed at snow-glistened rooftops of the flats behind our kitchen window. How hard was it for little Easter boys and girls to find their neon green and magenta colored eggs in the half-melted snow?

To brighten up our not-quite-spring weather, I formulated and experimented with quiche. A light quiche, if possible, and there are tricks to lighten quiches. I’ve seen recipes for both going crust-less quiches and quiches that use a simple mashed potato crust. But hey, what’s a traditional holiday without a little butter and cream -- Just a bit of both? Okay, a bit of cream and a lot of butter. Balance – it’s all about balance.

Forget potatoes, forget a non-existent crust and give me flaky, buttery, browned goodness. Quiche crust, I’m not afraid to do 300 crunches the next morning. (There are no witnesses, but I did do 300 crunches the next morning.) I am an all butter pie crust gal. Crisco scares me, and I still cannot bring myself to use lard (although if I were put into a smoke-filled interrogation room with the blinds drawn and the ceiling fan whirling and causing a shadow upon the table, I would tearfully admit to preferring lard over Crisco before wiping my eyes with my blood red, 1-inch long fingernails).

For those who are intimidated by a pie crust more than being interrogated in a film noir, Gourmet’s all butter pastry dough is a no-brainer. As all good things, it only takes a bit of time to create something memorable (or at the very least, edible).

Shane and I agreed a quiche with asparagus and goat cheese sounded divine, reminiscent of an omelet we had at a nearby diner. However, after searching the internet for a simple goat cheese and asparagus quiche, nothing I found quite passed the Emilie standard. Most recipes called for both heavy cream and whole milk. I keep 1% milk in the fridge for me, and 2% milk for Shane. I don’t have room in either my fridge or my pants for either whole milk or cream. Forget bikini season, I’m just trying to make my skinny jeans go from eye popping to only slightly crushing my spleen. I do, however, keep a small container of fully fattening sour cream. Sour cream has saved me from cluttering my fridge with both buttermilk and heavy cream. From pancakes to potato soup to (now) quiche… oh forget it. I may as well be wearing a ruffled apron and an unnaturally white smile.

I have my crust, I have my main ingredients, and now I have a milk plan. For every 3 parts milk (using 2% milk), use 1 part sour cream, combine in a jar, and vigorously shake. Voila! The milk comes out thicker than whole milk, but not as rich or fattening as pure cream.

Eggs – how many eggs does it take to make a quiche? Two, but I wouldn’t ask them to check out my breaker box. From my quiche-search, the number of eggs to fill a 9 inch crust varied from 3 large to 6 large. What is a girl to do? With a willingness to completely screw up my recipe, I penciled a formula: for a 9-inch pie dish, use 2 whole eggs and 2 eggs yolks combined with 1 cup milk, or 1 cup of combined milk and sour cream. The rest of my quiche plan came together easily.

Here is the formula I concocted for a 9-inch pie plate:

1 9-inch pie crust

2 medium shallots, sliced
12 oz fresh asparagus, woody ends trimmed, and cut into 1-inch pieces on the diagonal
1 tablespoon butter

2 large eggs
2 egg yolks (from large eggs)
¼ cup sour cream
¾ cup 2% milk
3 scallions, white and some green, chopped
Salt and pepper

8 oz soft goat cheese, cut into 15 rounds
Fresh thyme


Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Roll out pie crust and fit into 9-inch pie plate. Set aside in refrigerator until ready to use.

In a large pan over medium heat, sauté shallots and asparagus in butter until asparagus are crisp tender, about 5-8 minutes. Do not overcook asparagus or they’ll become mushy in quiche.

While asparagus is sautéing, combine sour cream and milk in a jar, and shake vigorously until sour cream is incorporated into milk. Combine milk and sour cream mixture with whole eggs, egg yolks, and scallions and whisk until eggs are pale yellow and well incorporated. Season with salt and pepper.

Remove pie crust from refrigerator. Crumble and scatter half the goat cheese rounds on the bottom of the crust. Top goat cheese with asparagus and shallots, and pour egg mixture over asparagus. Dot the top of the mixture with remaining goat cheese rounds, distributing them evenly.

Bake on middle rack of the oven for 35 minutes. Quiche will not be completely set, and that’s okay; it’ll continue to cook after it’s removed from the oven. Let quiche cool for 10 minutes or up to several hours (I made mine 2 hours in advance). Serve at room temperature (of, if you must, “nuke” it Shane-style).

Conclusion: Creamy, smooth, and light, even for a dish wrapped in butter and flour. What would I do differently? For starters, I need to measure our pie plate. I have it ingrained in my brain that it’s a 9-inch pie plate, but my filling left a lot of exposed pie crust. For those who love crusts, this may not be an issue. Personally I desire more balance between filling and crust. For my next quiche, I plan on upping the egg quantity to 3 whole eggs and 3 yolks, while increasing the milk mixture to 1 ½ cups. Also, as a request from Shane, I will cut back the amount of goat cheese to about 7 ounces, crumbled and scattered more into the quiche rather than artfully arranged on the top layer. Cheese, butter, and sour cream may not help me fit into my skinny jeans, although I did compromise by forgoing a rich dessert. By eating my bread bunny’s raisin eyes, I compensated.

Beauty and the Baguette

Before I reveal my startlingly ugly baguette blunders, I want to prove that I can make pretty bread. This is my standard loaf of bread. I made a dough from 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour, 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour, 2 tablespoons of my home grown sourdough starter, 1 teaspoon of salt, and enough water to make a shaggy to firm dough, roughly 1 1/3 cups. After a 25 minute hand knead and a 30 minute nap, the dough grew nicely in my well floured 9 inch brotform.

Twelve hours later a doughy, lightly sour-smelling butterfly emerged from it's wicker cocoon where I slashed it crosswise with a serrated knife. In a mega-hot, 450 plus degree oven, my beautiful butterfly let out a mighty RAWWRRR as it ripped its crust Ala the Incredible Hulk. Fortunately my bread is not as sour as Mr. Hulk, and it tastes much better with a variety of sweet and savory food things. My latest breakfast trend has been to slather toasted slices with almond butter and plum jam.

Oh but how my ego whimpers as I long to make a loaf that is somewhat passable as a baguette. This darling was one of three that rose horizontally instead of vertically even with my cushioning each baguette with an oil-slicked slice of cling wrap. The baguettes were conceived from the same formula as above. With a quickly sinking love for baking, I slashed each baguette, bummed my beauties couldn't even make it to the swim suit round. Even a blast of hot, gassy air wasn't enough to inflate the impossible. Not feeling worthy enough to display these loaves next to a hearty soup or with a hunk of cheese and olives, I devoured part of each (quite tasty) loaf for breakfast that week. A pop under the broiler and a smear of almond butter and plum jam was yet again a nice way to begin my day.

With a little help from a sheet of parchment paper crafted into a complicated couche, my next loaves did obey my command to sit and stay. The top loaf was another sourdough, victim to a drag and slash. And the bottom loaf is a faux baguette, meaning I used leftover egg and olive oil enriched dough to create a baguette shape in order to practice my slashing technique. Naturally, my mock baguette is the most attractive of the three, although the egg and olive oil gave the loaf a soft crust and mildly flavored crumb. Eating breakfast as if I were a king, or at least prime minister, I toasted slices of the bread, smearing each slice with (mmmm yes) almond butter and plum jam

But my heart beats to beautify my collection of baguettes. While the complicated couche did a stellar job cradling my baguette dough, I prefer the rise-and-dump method of a brotform. It's less fussy and I've never had luck with a real couche. Dough sticks to the cloth, I yell embarrassing words and glare at the oven for the half hour. Therefore, I have almost talked myself into purchasing a brotform especially for baguettes. Perhaps I can once again cheat my way to making more authentic looking baguettes with a promise I'll start pairing even the ugly ones with a gorgeous slice of Stilton to go with my plum jam.